


Country Roads

by WolfVenom



Series: R6S Drabbles [11]
Category: Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six (Video Games)
Genre: Arguing, Cuddling & Snuggling, Domestic Fluff, Father Figures, Gen, Light Angst, Major Character Injury, Medical Procedures, Mild Language, Platonic Cuddling, Sleeping Together, Team as Family, Worry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-24
Updated: 2018-05-24
Packaged: 2019-05-13 08:09:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14745116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WolfVenom/pseuds/WolfVenom
Summary: Mute is in the hospital after a particularly gruesome mission.





	Country Roads

“With all due respect, Doc, please  _step aside and let me see my boy_ ,” Thatcher growled, voice raw with sleepless nights and scratched to filth from stressed complaints, “he’s awake, ain’t he?  _Please_.”

The look on the medic’s face crumpled from stoicism to pity, eyes wrought with distress and the tension in his shoulders bled in defeat, grasping the older operators shoulder in a friendly and reassuring squeeze.

“Ten minutes,  _oui_? He needs rest, Thatcher. He’s on thin ice and soon I won’t be able to do anything more.”

A whine, deep in the back of his throat, inaudible but agonizing all the same. It tore his composure and he rushed past the plastic curtain of the medbay once Doc left, resting his helmet by the door and wiping the redness of worry from his tired face. He didn’t want to turn around, back to the stretcher and flinching at every loud beep from the cardiac monitor.

What if it stopped? What if the monotone drone of a flatline haunted his nightmares for the rest of his life, a memory of a young soul taken too early?

“Hey, Maggie.”

The lump behind his tongue swelled, and Thatcher deflated, turning slowly and dropping himself into the chai by Mute’s bedside. He was a mess. His hair was sticking out everywhere and the white gauze over his eye was caked with blood, seeping from red to brown to yellow in some grotesque bullseye where the sniper caught him.

His hands were shaking, resting limply in his lap, torso bandaged thoroughly and interrupted only by a clean pair of briefs, his only dignity, he  _despised_ those gowns. Never liked how loose they were.

The legs on his seat wailed against the tile as he pulled closer, reaching for one of the young’uns shaking hands to hold and quell the tremors that wracked the deathly pale fingers. “You alright, mate? Do you feel okay?” Thatcher rasped, denying eye contact out of guilt. Mute shrugged, subtly, a wince betraying his pain.

“Good as I can be with all the shrapnel in me, aye,” he swallowed dryly, and Thatcher hurriedly handed him the water bottle on his bedside. After a sip, he sighed and cracked his neck gently, “gonna heal up all my butchered insides ‘fore I get that shite out with surgery. Doc says more trauma on the wounds as it is now’ll just bleed me dry.”

His eyes crinkled in a twisted form of amusement and Thatcher gripped tighter, drawing Mute’s gaze away from the blood bag hanging to his right. “You’ll be okay, Mark. I’m sorry this had to happen to you.”

Mute tensed, but gave a small smile, clearly not as down as Thatcher was about his predicament.

“These things happen, Maggie. Ya fight, ya win, ya lose, ya suffer for it. I signed my own waver, don’t need parental guidance for it.”

“It shouldn’t have been you.”

“Mike, it’s nothing–”  
  
“You’re too young for this.”  
  
“Can you hush up for one moment, Maggie?” And Thatcher stilled, watched himself shake more than Mute was.

“Would it have been anyone else in that squad, they’d be downright dead by now. You wouldn’t bounce back from somm’in like this, not like Smoke or I could. I don’t need you to hound me too, you bloody wank. Yer not my mother.”

Something in his words struck Thatcher like a punch to the face. For the first time since stepping past the medbay doors, he looked Mute in the eye. Saw the pain littered there, but also the nobility and strength.

“I’ll patch up in a month like nothin’ ever happened, that’s just how I work. I’m not daft, I know I’m young, impressionable, a sponge ready to absorb whatever’s thrown at me. But not just mentally, Maggie. I’m young enough to take blows like this and regrow without fault–” he paused to cough, hacking into the crook of his elbow to the spike of the monitor, but held up a hand to stop Thatcher from jolting to his assistance.

“Yer worried, I know. Yer an old bastard and you project these things onto your boys, but you can let go once in a while, eh? We’re not all helpless pups at the teat.”

Thatcher forced down a retort, a reply, a stubborn denial, and instead just looked at Mute, noticed that his hair was clean albeit dishevelled, the dried blood crusted by his nose, the freckle that stalwartly stood out against his cheek, the blue of his eye, how young and precious and  _innocent_  he looked. How full of wisdom he was.

And Thatcher knew, knew that Mute was the smartest damn operator he knew, could psychoanalyze him to the molecule and still find more intelligence than a hivemind. But his adoration of his squad, the love for his boys, that just clouded his decades of training and experience and had him a wrecked mess, a warbling mother, someone a child brushed off out of annoyance yet watched on fondly.

“C’mere, Maggs.”

Reluctantly, worried head over heels about injuries, wounds, weight and width, Thatcher hopped up on the corner near the head of the bed and pulled Mute into a hug, relaxed and feeling safe that the boy was safe and sound and alive, still warm and breathing in his arms. Thatcher didn’t have kids, but he believed that this is what it felt like.

Mute soon dozed off in the crook of his arm, snoring softly while Thatcher crossed his ankles and read a magazine from the bedside table. Doc returned at the due time, appearing ready to kick Thatcher out, but faltered. Disturbing the utter peace they had created would be heresy. A quiet rummage around the room, he bestowed a bottle of painkillers in Thatcher’s care and departed for the night, leaving the two to bask in the comfort being alive brought.

By morning, Smoke had the blankets pooled around him at the foot of the bed and Sledge was fast asleep on Mute’s opposite side, providing the warmth Smoke had so rudely stolen. Thatcher watched his band of misfits fondly, a smile pulling the corner of his mouth upright in what surely must have been the first in a month or so. A particularly loud snort from Smoke and Sledge kicked him right in the chest with his foot, leaving Mute to laugh breathlessly at the stupidity.

“ _Shut up; you’re so goddamn loud. I’m trying to sleep_.” Sledge groaned into the pillow, pressed right into Mute’s shoulder.

Smoke growled and curled like a cat tightly around Mute’s legs, glaring with one eye at Sledge, “ _Fuck off, mate, this is my spot_.”

“ _Respect your goddamn elders, Jimmy boy, or I’ll put you the fuck down._ ”

“ _Test me ya silly cunt, I’d like to see you try_!”

They were safe. They always would be. Thatcher would be fine leaving them when his time came; these buggers wouldn’t even let a bullet bring them down. Worry like a hen was just his forte.


End file.
